In 1944, when the whole world seemed to be turning left, the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom and
laid the foundation for an intellectual and political
counter-revolution. Deeply disturbed by collectivist signs in Britain,
America, and elsewhere in the West, Hayek proposed a different road—the
road of classical liberalism. He listed the personal virtues necessary
to travel that road—independence and self-reliance, individual
initiative and local responsibility, and "a healthy suspicion of power
and authority." At the same time, he accepted a governmental role,
carefully limited by law, that encouraged competition and the
functioning of a free society.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in economics and the Presidential Medal
of Freedom, Hayek is regarded as one of the most influential economists
of the 20th century, the equal and the philosophical opposite of John
Maynard Keynes. An active intellectual, he founded the Mont Pelerin
Society, which has become the world's leading organization of
free-market advocates. For more on Hayek, see Bruce Caldwell's First Principles essay "Ten (Mostly) Hayekian Insights for Trying Economic Times."